Why would you want your RSS reader to be social?
This question was posed on Business Insider: I’m switching from Bloglines (shuttering 10/1) to Google Reader. First question: Why would I want my RSS reader to be social?
My response:
Google Reader is far and away the best RSS tool, so you’ve made a good choice there. Why would you want your RSS reader to be social?
1) Because there are so many options of things to read on the web, knowing which articles/blogs your friends have read or recommended the most helps maximize your reading time.
2) You want to see if your friends have specifically recommended something for you to read. Sure, they can do this by sending you an email or a Facebook message, but wouldn’t you rather get that right inside your RSS reader?
3) You’ll want to easily share some articles that you think your friends/followers would be interested in reading. What you read, what you blog, the pictures you take, the videos you favorite…these are all part of your life-stream, they help paint a picture of who you are. People like being able to see that picture in its totality.
Anything you’d add to this?
There is too much information out there and search engines are not smart enough to sort and prioritize it all to deliver to you exactly what you would most like to read right now – but a socially powered RSS reader allows for a smart crowd filtered approach to feed consumption – allowing you to compress the time you spend searching versus reading – for the return of a few moments of your time starring/liking/sharing/tagging you get back your peers or the whole crowds similar efforts – this fair transfer of efforts produces better results than any generic non social algorithm can do